Is This the Saudi Club World Cup? The Money Behind FIFA’s $1B Tournament

From DAZN to Aramco, Saudi Arabia's influence over FIFA’s flagship reboot runs deeper than the trophy presentation

The most expensive club tournament in football history kicked off at the weekend. Yet the spotlight isn’t only on the players. It’s on the funding. More specifically, it’s on Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which now sits at the heart of FIFA’s one billion dollar Club World Cup revival. Call it what you want, but this tournament isn’t just being played in America. It’s being bankrolled from Riyadh.

Saudi’s state fund, the same one behind LIV Golf and Newcastle United’s majority takeover, has been unveiled as a top-tier commercial partner for the tournament in a deal announced last week. The PIF is also the 75 per cent owner of Al Hilal, the Saudi Pro League’s flagship club, which is also one of the 32 teams in the competition. If the $9.55 million appearance fee paid to each team is anything to go by, it’s a setup that will pay dividends both financially and symbolically.

The tournament’s broadcast partner, DAZN, is also linked to Saudi investment. In December, FIFA confirmed DAZN had acquired global streaming rights to the new-look Club World Cup. Within weeks, reports of a Saudi investment, rumoured to be around one billion dollars, were confirmed. Not long after that, FIFA announced a $1 billion prize fund for the tournament. Interesting.

Saudi Arabia is not just funding the product. It is helping control how it is distributed, seen, and monetised. This is soft power in full display, polished, subtle, and dressed in sport.

And yet, FIFA has never been more bullish. This Club World Cup isn’t just a new format. It’s Infantino’s baby. Expanded to 32 teams, held every four years, and presented with the kind of production scale you’d expect from a World Cup or Olympics. It’s no coincidence that Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami have been parachuted in as host invitees. This is spectacle as strategy. Visibility as validation.

But with visibility comes scrutiny. Al Hilal have been drawn into a group alongside Real Madrid, RB Salzburg, and Pachuca, each with their own histories, budgets, and global reach. What makes Al Hilal unique isn’t just their spending power; it’s where that power originates.

When the same entity funding the tournament also owns one of the clubs, backs the prize pool, and is linked to the broadcast partner, the structure of the competition itself starts to feel blurred. Even Messi’s participation, while great for headlines, can’t shake the sense that this tournament might be serving dual purposes. Celebrating global football and consolidating influence.

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Football has always been shaped by financial muscle, but this goes a step further. Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, was also signed as a World Cup sponsor earlier this year, and let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia was also awarded the 2034 FIFA World Cup, without any competing bids. Those moves have further embedded the state’s presence deeper into FIFA’s commercial ecosystem.